


Hide and Seek

by ranchoff



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: ALL THE FLUFF, Dadistair, Domestic Fluff, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Family Fluff, Gen, Parenthood, Warden Alistair, some shameless family fluff, well he's not a warden anymore but I'm just clarifying he's not king
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-11 20:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15324066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranchoff/pseuds/ranchoff
Summary: Alistair plays hide and seek with his daughter and it's all good wholesome fun, until she hides a little *too* well and some shenanigans ensue.





	Hide and Seek

**Author's Note:**

> Brief context - this is set several years after the events of DAI, Alistair is not king. He and my Warden are married and are now cured of the Grey Warden taint, retired in peaceful obscurity.

Alistair crept out of the kitchen with big, exaggerated steps, deliberately looking in every direction except toward the giggling strawberry-blonde head crouched under the table.

“ _Where_ could she possibly have _gone_?” he asked loudly to himself, hands on hips, contorting his face in hyperbolized confusion. “I can't see her anywhere!”

The muffled giggling from under the table grew conspicuously louder.

“Hmm….” He circled the table slowly several times, nudging the chairs as he did so. “I just don't know where she could be! I've looked all over!” The phantom giggling turned into an shriek of amusement.

“Wait just one minute….” Alistair said as he suddenly crouched down to look directly under the table. He gasped dramatically. “Oh, _there_ she is!” His daughter ran out from her hiding spot, but he quickly snatched her up and threw her over his shoulder. “Too late, I found you!” Rose’s bright red face matched her hair as she screamed with laughter, and he stepped over to the nearby couch and set her down.

“I hide _so_ good!” Rose declared importantly.

“You sure do!” Alistair nodded with enthusiasm.

“Now _you_ have to hide.”

“Hmm…” He put on a serious, pensive expression. “Well, I'll give it a shot, but I don't know if I can hide as good as you.”

“You _have_ to hide, papa,” she repeated firmly.

“Alright, alright, anything you say,” he said, and stood up.

The tiny girl covered her eyes and began counting out loud, or at least she attempted to.

“One…..five…...five…….three…….four…...ten…….five…….”

Alistair looked around the house for a moment and quickly discovered that there were very few places, if any, that he could hide himself properly. Lariel must be so much better at this game, he realized with a smirk.

Giving up, he walked into Rose's room and simply knelt on the ground behind her wooden rocking horse, then waited with patient amusement from his not-quite-hiding spot.

“Here I’m coming!” her tiny voice yelled. After a minute or two of hearing her little footsteps patter back and forth between the kitchen and common room, she finally appeared in the doorway with a proud gasp, pointing at him. “I see you! I found you! You didn't hide very good!”

“I guess I didn't,” he laughed. “How about _you_ hide again, pup? Much more fun that way.”

Rose hid a few more times, each time watching her father circle around with mock cluelessness, while she constantly covered up her face to hold back the bursts of proud giggles at herself. As Alistair scooped her up from her newest hiding place - lying flat on the floor of her room with a blanket thrown over herself - a reluctant yawn drifted out of her.

“Uh-oh. I think it might be your nap time, young lady.”

“No! Not sleepy. Want to hide more.”

“Rose,” he said firmly but lovingly. “Come on now. Just lie down for a bit and by the time you wake up, mama will be home and then _she_ can play with you, alright?”

“No,” she whined, not crying but furrowing her brow into a frustrated, serious expression. “I don't _want_ a nap! I want play hide, papa.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but all that came out was a half-tired, half-amused sigh. Maker help him, he couldn't tell her 'no’ and she already knew it, too.

“ _One_ more time, and then you’re taking a nap.”

“I’m gonna hide _really_ good,” she answered and ran off, not even waiting for him to close his eyes or start counting. Alistair shook his head and chuckled to himself, waited a few moments, then wandered out to the common area.

“Hmm, where did she go?” He pondered aloud as he walked back and forth, listening for the usual shuffling of feet and muffled snickering, but the room was strangely quiet. Maybe she had finally mastered the art of stealth after all. “Here I come….”

He checked all her favorite hiding places but saw nothing. She did hide well this time. _She must really not want to take a nap._ He circled through the house a few times, thinking for sure he had spotted her behind the curtains or under some more blankets, but he was mistaken every time. As he paced the kitchen again, he noticed that the front door was open and realized that it was much, much too quiet.

“Rose?” Alistair called out in earnest, though he tried to keep a light tone to his voice. “Come on out now, I can't find you! I give up! …... Rose?”

He went outside and ran around the perimeter of the house, nudging crates and flower pots and anything else a three-year-old could hide behind out of the way as he did so, calling out her name at regular intervals, his voice rapidly growing more tense.

The mabari wandered outside to see what all the fuss was about.

“Where’d she go, boy?”

The dog whined and cocked his head less than helpfully.

Alistair's chest tightened as he contemplated what to do, looking out around him. Town was only a short distance away, but their home was so far removed from everything, surely no one had just wandered by and….taken her? He shook his head at that idea, he knew it was too soon to think that extreme, though his blood went cold at the mere suggestion of it.

He made several more passes through the house, this time looking in every single place she could possibly be and even places she couldn't, his heart pounding harder every time he called her name and heard no answer, every time he checked a new potential hiding spot and found nothing inside. She _had_ to be here somewhere, she _had_ to be….Maker, what kind of father was he? Lariel would be home soon….as he continued his search he began a grim rehearsal in his head. _Welcome home, my love! Now, try not to panic, but our daughter is missing_.

As his mind started to wander to the worst possible conclusions, frenzied barks from the dog floated in from outside. He sprinted out to meet the source, and found the hound barking and shoving his nose toward a shrub growing against the side of the house. Alistair knelt down to peer between the leafy branches and recognized a blessedly familiar sight lying on the ground under them.

“Rose! I - oh, sweetheart, what are you _doing_ in there?”

She rolled over, rubbing her face and groaning sleepily.

"Hiding,” she said simply, then slowly crawled out. Her mop of hair was decorated with a mess of leaves and dirt. Alistair laughed incredulously, holding her close and kissing the top of her head many times in quick succession.

“Oh, you scared me,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “Rose, my girl - don't _do_ that, alright?”

“I was hiding.”

“I know, but you can't wander outside on your own, and you have to come out when papa asks you to. You know that.” She yawned. “Were you….did you fall asleep in there while you were hiding?”

“No,” she answered defensively, through another yawn.

“You did, didn't you? See, I told you it was nap time,” he chided.

“Not sleepy.”

“So you've said.” He stood up, carrying her with him into the house, her arms wrapped around his neck. “But now we’re going to clean up your hair and then we’re going to tuck you into bed. Right?”

Her response came by way of a vague cranky noise.

Alistair added softly, “And then we're definitely _not_ going to tell mama about this.”


End file.
